Symposium Programme
Denis Alevi SFB1315 PhD, Laura Dolon SFB874 PhD, Rebekka Heinen SFB1280 PhD, Zahra Fayyaz FOR 2812 PhD
Symposium Coordination
Lisa Velenosi, SFB1315 PhD-Postdoc cohort, Network Coordinator

From the creators of SFB 1315, SFB 874 and SFB 1280 a new cutting-edge unique PIs-free PhD Berlin-Bochum symposium took place in March 2021! Lost behind the tons of papers to read and comprehend, experiments to put through and terabytes of data to analyze, PhD students were locked up from the outer world by the pandemics to top it up. Nothing seemed to end this vicious circle until the day the new PhD symposium was announced… Suddenly, the beginning of spring was matched to the opportunity to encode many new faces that were associated with exciting memory topics in no less than zoom and amazing Gather.Town space! All presentations restrictions were put down and creative lighting talks were presented with the speed of light. Ever wanted to find a scientific match based on an algorithm? The symposium offered this too! Mind matching, unconference and group collaboration enabled for the PhDs working on different topics and with different species to think outside the box and not only to exchange the ideas but to create collaborative original futuristic projects. When the symposium time ran out and there were only empty coffee cups left on Gather.Town, PhDs returned to the piles of their unfinished work, looking forward to future zoom meetings and hiking together and dreaming about their futuristic projects coming true. (SFB1315 subproject B04 PhD Iryna Schommartz)

The Online PhD Memory Symposium took place on GatherTown, with participants bumping into each other in virtual corridors, conference rooms and even a bar. In spite of the restrictions in place because of Covid, the attendees were impressed by the social and interactive atmosphere. The first day featured Lightning Talks and Mindmatching, in which participants first introduced each other and then met students they’d been matched with because of similar research projects and interest. The PhD Empowerment workshop with Julia Lemmle allowed students to explore how to develop, voice, and receive feedback. The second day featured an Unconference, a Group Collaboration, where students could work together on a new project idea, and the final presentation of the result in the Poster Session. (SFB1315 subproject A02 PhD Anne Voigt )

A big thanks to PhD coordination by Lisa and to the PhD organizers Rebekka, Denis, Laura and Zahra.